Balancing around the 1% is killing this game

General Discussion
1

The game was suddenly balanced around the 1%'s opinion and you’re acting all surprised that the game is not nearly as popular as it used to be? Are you really that surprised? The more casual playerbase completely gave up when changes were made and not made to certain heroes that were literally meant to appease what Blizzard thought was the “professional opinion”. Sure, you could call it a professional opinion, but a professional’s opinion is not always the right one. Especially when you want a video game to be enjoyable for the majority.

Heroes that have been negatively impacted by pro bias

Bastion - remains obscure just because of the early days of Overwatch when no one knew what they were doing. Pros have made it very clear they don’t want to see Bastion be played at all, in any setting. The hero has been rotting since early 2017.
Brigitte - she is ridiculously difficult to play in high ranks and completely garbage in all ranks. The bias that seemingly everyone has will keep her in this terrible position.
Doomfist - is still a mess. Borderline unplayable sometimes due to the amount of bugs that he has suffered from since he was released.
D.Va - received so many unnecessary nerfs just to get rid of dive, even though Winston went untouched.
Mercy - now a rez bot with a useless ultimate because pros couldn’t be bothered trying to find her before she pressed Q. “muh skill” prevents her from being a main support, and her non-defensive ultimate prevents her from being an off support. So she’s just bad, mainly due to pro bias.
Moira - absolute trash, completely worthless in high ranks, now they’re afraid of buffing her because pros hate her.
Sombra - her ability to disable… well, abilities is controversial for pros. On top of this, she acts as a spy cam for her team. You get rid of this, Sombra will be more worthless than Symmetra 1.0. Speaking of…
Symmetra - received an unwanted rework with the sole purpose of trying to make OWL more interesting. To no one’s surprise, it failed. Was meta for 2 minutes and immediately nerfed into obscurity, when some heroes with a history of being overpowered ashe, ana, bap, genji, mccree, widow, zarya have gone unchanged for months on end.

Heroes that pros love and have received little to no changes

Ana - pros’ favorite Support. No counters to nade, infinite range with some of the best healing in the game, and has one of the best ultimates in the game. She has received more nerfs than the heroes I’m about to mention, but when she’s the best Support she stays there for a while.
Genji - not meta = bad? Not necessarily. Nano Blade was the strategy for the majority of 2020 and it was insufferable. He went without nerfs for way too long, mainly because it “looks cool” and would make OWL more exciting to watch. That is the only reason he went without nerfs for the longest time, while the players had to suffer in silence.
McCree - I don’t think I need to explain this one.
Reinhardt - the entire game revolves around him when he’s good and it’s annoying. Pros look at this and say to themselves “yes, this is how the game should be.” With Reinhardt front and center, while every other main tank rots and withers away.
Tracer - hasn’t received a meaningful nerf in the entire history of the game. She’s the flagship character, I get it. But she’s also a favorite DPS in OWL, which is probably why she hasn’t received a single negative change or any changes period.
Widowmaker - if your widow isn’t better than the enemy widow, you lose. Pros absolutely love this exchange, while the majority seemingly can’t stand it. The health nerf didn’t do anything, she can still get value by not being with her team, and she can click your head from anywhere on the map. zzz
Zarya - this hero is genuinely broken. Bubbles, one of the highest DPS potential in the game tank btw , on top of that has one of the best (if not the best) ultimates in the game. I don’t think she has ever received a single meaningful nerf in the history of the game. If this isn’t favoritism, idk what is.

The majority of your playerbase are not professionals. Far from it. How are casual players supposed to enjoy the game when the more casual heroes are being nerfed to the ground and receiving unwanted reworks because professionals demanded it? And you’re surprised that the game went from 50 million to 10 million active accounts in the span of 3 years? Don’t pretend that half of those currently active accounts aren’t just alt accounts.

TL;DR - there’s a blatant pro bias when it comes to the balancing in Overwatch and Blizzard endorses it. This only hurts the game since the more casual playerbase, the majority, isn’t being tended to in any fashion.

110 Likes
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oh and also Mccree has yet to receive a nerf, most likely because of OWL

24 Likes
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Who said they were getting rid of hack?

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You know they’re going to. She can’t catch a break, even when she isn’t meta. Blizzard will do something eventually.

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the rework wasn’t downward. it was objectively upward in actually giving the kit an avenue for independent uptime. what was downward was not following through numberwise, nerfing her and hard trashing her core uptime tool. All of which (i.e. all those nerfs) you can’t even call “balancing for the top 1%” anyways.

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I mean she’s not played much at that level, outside of the occasional last ditch dive attempts.

Of course a tool that can just remove abilities, or in other words your opponents ability to effectively engage with the game can be rather frustrating. Especially at that level, so I can definitely see sombra as a whole reworked.

Maybe into a support kind of role, where hack is effectively a sleep dart equivalent. And push Emp into a defensive tool instead of an offensive one.

But I can’t see them removing the utility all together.

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Granted the pro’s play at a different level than everyone else. So why couldn’t they balance the game around different ranks? Say plat and below gets these buffs/nerfs, than take a couple more ranks and balance them. It would help players in all ranks and the game is suppose to know what rank we should be.

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It would be too much work.

Each rank has their own performances and conditions, which dictates the hero winrate/pickrate. Like, a hero like Pharah in Bronze is definitely different from the Pharah in Plat. So, you would have to change the hero for each ranks, then repeat it with the other 31 heroes.

And if possible, repeat it on all console systems as well. Why? On Console, Pharmercy is the GOAT. So you would also have to make exclusive console changes on top of the different changes for each hero on each rank

Way too much work that wouldn’t do solve much tbh.

2 Likes
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This is one of the worst takes I’ve ever seen here, good job.

33 Likes
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Than the game will die, the pro’s can not keep this game alive forever. OWL numbers are already dismal at best.

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Downward in terms fun and pickrate though. A lot of Symm mains actually preferred 2.0 for good reasons.

And although there are at least a few problems with the devs catering so hard to OWL and the top 1%, another factor they neglected is the fun factor.

They made the game fun again (or at least started that process) with the April Fool’s Joke (as sad as that is). Its like, they don’t care how unfun Brig is to play rn (set aside balance of her).

idk I don’t have my hopes up.

5 Likes
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Man… They arent balancing the Game around any rank. They are just terrible balancing the Game.

How You think that they are balancing the Game around GM ir owl if those ranks have to play the same heros for like 5 months.

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Why are we acting like the balancing wasnt also “terrible” before OWL existed…

like i say the following with 100% certitude:

remove OWL and we’d be complaining just as much about the balancing…you want a “competitive” game (not even talking pro play) then you balance top to bottom…period

13 Likes
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before 3.0 rework: 0.86% global (source)

about 4 months after 3.0 rework release: 0.75% global (source)

nearing 1 yr after 3.0 rework release after they gave a few small buffs to 3.0 and before the :put_litter_in_its_place: infinite tp nerf: 0.98% global (source)

“a downward in terms of pickrate” simply just isn’t true when talking about sym’s 3.0 rework as a whole. it did rise when blizz was still in the right direction with her, but they decided to do a 180.

in terms of fun, it’s largely subjective, but my argument is that 3.0 (at least before infinite tp nerf) is essentially the same as old sym but with her own mobility tool (tp) to do what she sought out to do back in the day sooner and more frequently (i.e. getting to more aggro spots for turrets, accessing flanks, accessing better angles, etc.). like if you play current sym as if she didn’t have tp on e, the resulting gameplay highly resembles old sym gameplay.

doubt on the “good reasons” part tbqh…
FYI I did play sym from 1.0 btw.

I’d say giving a mobility and burst combo enabling tool to a hero that had low effective range, low mobility, low burst and nowhere near enough sustain for her to get uptime in her effective range for her job is defs a fair and fun oriented way to make the hero more fun.

the problem is they didn’t follow through with the numbers and they neutered the very tool that was the core of the rework.

her orbs are one of the worst projectile fires in the game from sheer :put_litter_in_its_place: numbers on them (sniper-tier low firerate while having them so slow moving that not even their larger size compensates it causing aim to not matter in most ranges simply doesn’t make sense). spiking up the down time of tp so hard makes the least sense given sym’s effective range and the constraints on how much sustain they can give her.

would like to point out that ~15m on sym primary isn’t enough to solve her uptime core problems. like simply having a ~15m on her primary doesn’t mean she wouldn’t need a team pocket for her to use primary outside of finishing off low hp targets within primary range. like there’s a whole other side of how much sustain it demands for such use, which they’re never going to give sym unless she’s reworked as a tank to be an indian zarya.

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they don’t keep it, they just play the game and push their opinion for the whole game.

even if all the names come out, there will always be other “PRO” OWL players

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Fixed that for you :wink:

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why do u think ult is usless its pretty good its a hybrid of a supercharger that heals and dmg boosts

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I’d take mcree in enemy team any time of day over mei, sym or bastion. At least that guy requires skill, fth excluded.

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He requires aim, not skill.

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Define skill.

2 Likes